


Inhuman

by skittenninja



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Character Death, POV Sam Winchester, Paranormal, Sam is not having a good day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-01 07:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20810984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skittenninja/pseuds/skittenninja
Summary: There are things you can't run from, and there are things you can't forget.Separated from his brother and up against an unknown creature that toys with fear, Sam is forced to confront them all at once.





	Inhuman

How they got separated wasn’t a fun story.

Sam had gone on a hunt with Dean, both of them thinking it would be just a simple ghost case.

They’d been very wrong.

The old house they’d come to investigate had so many rooms and hallways it was nearly impossible to find your way out. Doors and windows locked behind them, or seemingly disappeared altogether, escape being swallowed up as loud sounds and screams chased them around the building.

Somewhere along the way, Sam didn’t make it through the door fast enough, and he watched it swing closed in front of him, Dean reaching out and the sound of him screaming Sam’s name cut off with the deafening bang of the wood separating them. The paint on the walls started melting over top of it, going from a bruised shade of blue and fading to a dark, dark red. The kind of red you couldn’t find in paint. Sam tried to reach the door, only to find it was gone. And so was the wall. And so was everything else beyond it. Because there was just red, red, red, pouring over his arm.

And then it was red, red, red pouring over his face and shoulders and submerging his legs as he stumbled through the river coming down upon him. There was no house now, not as far as Sam was concerned, because all he could see and taste and hear was the red as it continued to spread everywhere around him.

Then Sam felt himself drop, the floor beneath him disappearing like everything else had as he drowned in the red. It crossed his mind that this would be how he died, submerged in such an ugly colour.

It was less than a second after he thought that when it all disappeared again.

Sam inhaled sharply and opened his eyes, finding that the walls and floor were back but that they were different, taking on the appearance of what seemed to be a basement. There were windows now, but only three, each so small and with so many bars covering them it was a miracle any light was getting in at all.

The door was still gone.

Sam was going to get up, going to try and find some kind of exit, but a voice calling out from the darkness froze him. As if all the cold from the concrete floor had been frightened, too, and had jumped into his bones.

But then it was warm. Too warm.

And too bright.

Sam looked to see his mother standing in the corner, her face stuck years in the past. She was younger, and she was happier, and she was a stranger.

And he had to watch as she burst into flames.

Sam cried out and tried to run at her again, but the flames kept spreading, as if the air itself was catching fire. The smoke was far, far too black, moving with a mind of its own and dancing with the flames that supported it.

Sam felt choked up for more reasons than one.

There was so much pain on his mother’s face, that much was evident.

But there was also contempt, burning hotter and angrier than everything around them. Sam would have liked to say it didn’t suit her, but he couldn’t, because he didn’t know. He never really would.

She wore fear on her face, too. It was the most brutal kind of terror a person can express, and it wasn’t directed at the flames.

It was directed at Sam, and his hand, which he hadn’t realized was holding a match. One that burned like the rest of the room.

Sam tried to move to put it out, but his lungs betrayed him as he felt even more choked up, coughing up all the smoke and anguish and guilt that were slowly killing him.

However, something else came out instead, something of the ugliest colour.

More red.

It smelled of sulfur and the smoke howled with laughter as Sam kept coughing more and more, every splash of red making the flames grow hotter and higher until he could no longer see his mother in front of him.

Something else walked out of the fire, blonde hair glowing bright to match their surroundings as she moved towards Sam.

Jess was standing over Sam as he was stuck coughing on the floor. She wore the same expression she had when he saw her last, the one he’d never forget. Her clothes were charred and stained with red, and she looked at him the same way his mother had.

Sam reached out, still attempting to breathe normally and failing, but something dragged him away before he could say all the things he’d been wishing he could say for years.

A wall of flames separated them once more.

Another familiar voice called his name from directly behind him, and Sam knew it was coming from whoever had pulled him away. Against his better judgement, Sam turned to face them, even though the voice had this saccharine tone to it that made him want to vomit.

Dean was standing there. Or what would have been Dean. For he looked like his brother, but his eyes were black and there was that odious mark on his arm. The arm that was holding a toothed blade that seemed to match its owner’s wicked smile.

The thing that was not Dean was covered in open wounds of all kinds, each weeping that awful colour. One of them was rather prominent, and that was the one on his neck, a little crown of fanged teeth marks that had pierced his skin.

“I wasn’t just gonna leave you there, Sammy,” said the thing that was not Dean, his smile growing so wide Sam thought his face would split apart. “I couldn’t leave my brother there. You’d do the same.”

Sam stood up shakily, no longer coughing but realizing that he was crying. He didn’t know when he’d started.

The thing that was not Dean let out a howling laugh that rattled Sam’s bones, and the toothed blade clattered in amusement.

“Sorry, too soon? Because it was too late for me,” it hissed with venom in its voice, and somehow everything hurt twice as much as before.

Sam tried to apologize, to speak, to make any sound at all, but nothing came out. No noise touched his tongue, only the salty tears that streamed down his face and stung wherever they landed.

“I gave you _everything_, and you did this me,” the thing that was not Dean spat at him. “When I was little, I said I wanted a baby brother, not a monster. Not whatever abomination you really are. And you know what? Hell seems more and more like heaven if it means I get to finally be away from you.”

At this point, Sam was trying to scream, but still nothing was coming out. Just those salty tears that were starting to taste more and more metallic.

“What, you can’t speak now? Are you finally getting that your whole ‘talk it out’ speech never really works? We both know you only do it to try and convince yourself you’re somehow not the monster you know you are.”

“That’s not true!” Sam finally managed to get out, his scream echoing and echoing as he lunged at the thing that was not Dean. His mouth still tasted like metal and he knew his cheeks were stained with red little tear trails, but he couldn’t think about that yet.

Sam tackled the thing to the ground, where he suddenly found that it was Dean. No black eyes, no vicious smile, just Dean.

Dean on the floor of Bobby’s old house after that failed exorcism, intent on saving Sam. Dean on the floor of that motel with broken glass surrounding him, telling him to not come back if he walked out. Dean up against the impala, bloodied and bruised but still pleading with Sam. Dean pinned up against a pillar in the bunker, trapped that way by some angelic force.

Dean, bloodied, bruised, hurting, or all of the above and it was always, always, always Sam’s fault.

Sam jumped back, stuck on the floor once more and trying to ignore the red all across his hands as sobs wracked his body.

The thing that was not Dean again sat up far too quickly.

“So, you don’t believe me? Why don’t you ask them?” He gestured to the rest of the room with that toothed blade, which still seemed to smile away.

The flames that had once engulfed the room had been replaced by people standing all around Sam, staring daggers into his already pain-filled and red-stained body.

There was Castiel, angel blades stuck in his vessel and black lines that creeped up his skin. There was a hostility to his gaze Sam hadn’t seen in years.

“I should have killed you back then. I wish Anna was able to know how right she’d been.”

Then there was Jack, burned out eye sockets and the awful, awful colour staining his hands and mouth. He was smiling in such a way that seemed to unhinge his sanity and his jaw.

“I’m so happy I get to be just like you.”

There was Charlie, holding her insides in place with one hand while the other held a stained and ripped comic book. Jo was in the same shape, her hair smoldering and skin burning in a way that matched her mother, who was standing right next to her.

Eileen was ripped to shreds, hellhound claw marks tearing apart her body and future. Mick looked at him with dead eyes, a bullet hole in his head. The archangel blade was still lodged in Gabriel’s chest as he screamed at Sam for dragging him back into it all. Adam’s body was so destroyed he would have been unrecognizable if his face hadn’t been spared, but he looked at Sam with glowing blue eyes that would never be his own again. Kevin’s eyes were burned out, and yet he still managed to stare at Sam with the utmost betrayal. Pamela was blinded and bleeding because Sam was too late, and though she couldn’t see she seemed to look at him with fearful recognition. The other psychic kids from so many years ago all leered at him with yellow eyes and assorted wounds, smiling at him in a horrifyingly synchronized manner. John stood in front of them, staring with the same shade of yellow as he yelled at Sam to kill him.

Jess, his mom, Ash, Magda, Madison, and a myriad of other dead and hurt people were all looking at him. They wanted answers. They wanted to know why they deserved this. Why Sam did this to them. Because he did do it, of course. He knew every time one of them died or got hurt that it was because of him. They were just here to remind him of that.

Sam’s throat was raw from screaming as he felt more of the red make its way to his mouth, though he didn’t remember when he’d started to produce such a noise. It didn’t sound like him, the way it grotesquely echoed around the room and around his mind.

It sounded inhuman.

Which, Sam realized, meant it _did_ sound like him. It sounded like the person all these people had been reminding him of, who was a monster and a murderer and _inhuman_.

_He was inhuman._

The burning from earlier came back, but it was not that unbearable heat anymore. It was an icy kind of pain, and Sam knew that was because its source always burned cold.

He knew who was standing behind him.

“It’s taken you so long to accept this,” said the voice as Sam turned to face it. “It’s taken you so long to accept _me_.”

The owner of the voice was someone he hated more than anyone and knew better than anyone. It was his own face staring down at him, one eye a sulfuric shade of yellow and one glowing bright blue. There were wings behind him, one of which was skeletal and one of which was so pristine it could only belong to god’s former favourite son. Red was all over his shirt, all over his hands and all over the knife they held. A broken and thorny crown was sitting upon his head, rooted firmly to his skull. Forever immovable.

“This is the you that everyone sees,” Sam’s doppelganger continued, “Because this is the real you.”

“No… no,” Sam managed to stammer, trying to think of something to refute his twin’s claim but cracking under that terrifying glare.

“It’s been written since the dawn of time, Sammy.” Its fraying patience became evident through the bitter use of his nickname. “And you just kept on writing.”

“I… I did everything I could to get away from you.”

The other Sam laughed, and Sam hated how much it sounded like the scream he’d let out just a minute ago.

“You always ran right back to me, and we both know why.”

A glow began to surround the other Sam’s body, wings becoming more angelic at first. Then red dripped from their feathers and onto the floor, and it served as a reminder of where they came from.

Sam tried to get to his feet yet again, but the plethora of power that his twin had stopped him instantly. He crumpled back to the ground in pain, wanting to get up but knowing that the other Sam outmatched him.

“We’re stronger like this. We felt helpless our whole lives, watching people die, and then for the first time we felt powerful. And you hate the fact that you want to feel powerful.”

The other Sam walked closer to him, steps methodical and confident.

“You hate that you felt powerful because this other part of you still wanted to be normal. Normal is what gets you dead. We are not normal. We never were, and we never will be. We were destined to be like this, to have all this blood on our hands, and we will never be able to escape it. We cannot run from this power, and deep down, you don’t really want to.

It’s why I look like this, such a mixed bag of demon blood and angel’s grace and a void where a soul should be. It’s because you always come back to this power. To me. To _us_.”

It smiled at Sam, and even his teeth were stained with that red. The mixture of ‘you’ and ‘we’ and ‘I’ just made him feel sicker and sicker. They were just an inch apart now, so close in distance and so close in heart. For once, Sam was left wishing that someone so close didn’t understand him at all.

But even now, the thing still understood far less than it assumed.

Then everything in Sam screamed at once, and he didn’t care about the red coming from his mouth or how his scream sounded as he threw a punch at his other version’s face. It connected with a crack, and the room around them seemed to shatter like glass. They were back in that first room with the bruised blue walls, and the other Sam was the one on the ground now, laughing and laughing away.

“You’re in denial,” the thing sang as it choked on red. “You’re in denial!”

“No,” Sam said firmly, walking towards the decaying twin. “I just know who I am now, because I’m done letting other people try to tell me the answer.”

Sam stomped down on his other version’s chest, right over his heart, and watched as it turned to dust and scattered away. It smiled the whole time.

He stood there for a moment, trying to catch his breath and waiting for the red on the floor to disappear.

It didn’t.

In his mind, the faces and words of all those hurt people and the smile of that other version of himself didn’t disappear either.

But that was okay.

Maybe someday he’d look at red and think of something pretty for once. Maybe someday those people wouldn’t scream at him in his dreams. Maybe someday he’d look in the mirror and wouldn’t see that grotesque version of himself staring back.

Maybe someday he’d truly feel human.

That day hadn’t come yet, and Sam knew this as he walked towards the door.

That day hadn’t come yet, and Sam knew there was a possibility that it would not ever arrive as he turned the handle.

That day hadn’t come yet, but Sam believed in a future where it would.

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to Bird Song by Florence + the Machine and suddenly got the inspiration to write this. Sorry for all the edgy angst haha, but I'm happy with how this turned out. Thanks for reading!


End file.
